David Cameron must think Christmas has come early. We’re more than 200 days into a government he leads, which is ideologically cutting public services and the welfare state. Yet on almost every unpopular announcement and unfair decision, it is still Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats who are taking all the flak. The Prime Minister plays the global statesman – travelling around the world and hosting foreign leaders in Downing Street – but rarely allows himself to be dragged into domestic policy controversies. George Osborne is seldom seen in public defending his reckless gamble with the economy. But week after week it is Lib Dem ministers such as Danny Alexander and Vince Cable who find themselves in TV studios defending what are essentially Conservative policies in this predominantly Conservative Government. The Lib Dems have willingly become David Cameron’s human shield, haemorrhaging support in the process. And since they have gone against almost everything they stood for, it’s tempting for us to focus our fire on the Lib Dems. This week, Ed Miliband and John Denham have rightly exposed their broken promises on tuition fees as they champion plans to triple tuition fees and cut teaching budgets by 80 per cent.
At the time of writing, some Lib Dem MPs and ministers are set to vote in favour of the fees hike, others are considering resigning, some backbenchers will abstain and a handful will stand by their pre-election pledges and vote against. And if those weren’t enough options, there’s another group calling for the vote to be delayed to spare Lib Dem blushes.
For those who have campaigned against them on the ground or seen what they’ve done when in power in local government, Lib Dems facing three ways at once will come as no surprise. We are right to expose them on this issue. But let’s not forget that this is essentially a Tory administration pursuing Tory policies and a small state ideology, with the willing assistance of the Lib Dems. For some of them this is comfortable territory. The Orange Book MPs have long wanted to take their party in this direction. For others, such as Simon Hughes and grassroots members, every day propping up this government is a struggle with their conscience. That’s why there has been a renewed effort by the Lib Dems to justify the choice they made to go into coalition with the Tories. Through books and articles, the Lib Dems have attempted to suggest that they had no choice at all. According to this version of history, in the post-election coalition talks Labour was not prepared to make concessions and our stubbornness and supposed rudeness meant an agreement with the Lib Dems was never possible.
The truth is that we were willing to compromise, but it soon became clear the Lib Dems were not serious about a deal with Labour. We were astonished that the Lib Dems were proposing immediate cuts to public spending even though we had both opposed them in our manifestos and spent the election campaign warning they would be dangerous for the economy. And while we were happy to agree a referendum on whether to change to the alternative vote system, as proposed in our manifesto, we could not agree to their demand to change the voting system without a referendum. Making such a major constitutional change without the agreement of the voters would have been wrong.
As the talks went on it became increasingly clear that the Lib Dems had already chosen to have a pact with the Tories – which is why Vince Cable and Simon Hughes were kept out of the room – but were using the talks with us to get more concessions out of the other side. And so they had to invent a story that Labour wrecked the talks in order to justify to their own members why they had thrown their lot in with the Tories.
While no attempted rewriting of history will spare Lib Dem seats, in most constituencies at the next general election, it will be the Tories we have to beat. So while we’re right to take the political fight to the Lib Dems on tuition fees, on other areas we must be careful not to play into David Cameron’s strategy by letting him and the Tories hide behind their coalition partners. The reason why Michael Gove’s troubles – on the school building fiasco, the Academies Bill and free schools and now under fire from Andy Burnham for a wobble on axing school sport funding – have been so damaging for the government is because it is so clearly a Tory Minister in the frame.
That’s also why I believe the Tories will be very vulnerable in the coming months on law and order as they cut police funding by 20 per cent. It’s a Conservative Home Secretary, a Conservative Police Minister and, in London, a Conservative Mayor who are responsible for cutting police officers and undermining the fight against crime. Above all, as Alan Johnson has said, the Government’s spending cuts are too fast and too deep; they’re Tory cuts driven by Tory ideology. So this should be our New Year’s resolution: let’s point out the Lib Dem broken promises, but never let David Cameron and the Tories off the hook.
Ed Balls is Shadow Home Secretary and Labour & Co-op MP for Morley and Outwood
